horrible

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.

   Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles!

2. 2
   adj

   Causing horror; terrible; shocking.

   Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.

3. 3
   adj

   Tremendously bad.

   Having now absorbed all or parts of 750 responses to my complaints about Transformers, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most of those writing agree with me that it is a horrible movie.

4. 4
   adj

   provoking horror

5. 5
   noun

   A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.

Etymology

First attested in Middle English (alternately as horrible and orrible) in 1303: from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, from Latin horribilis, from horr(ēre) (“tremble”) + -ibilis (“-ible”).